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The Oracles Against Babylon in Jeremiah 50-51: Structures and Perspectives

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The Oracles Against Babylon in Jeremiah 50-51: Structures and Perspectives Tyndale Bulletin 35 (1984) 25-63. THE TYNDALE OLD TESTAMENT LECTURE, 1983 THE ORACLES AGAINST BABYLON IN JEREMIAH 50-51: STRUCTURES AND PERSPECTIVES By Kenneth T. Aitken Of the many questions raised by the oracles against Babylon in Jeremiah 50-51, few have proved more problematical than the literary structure of the composition. On the one hand, whilst it is generally agreed that these chapters are not a literary unity but a collection of poems, there is little agreement concerning either their number and delimitation or the nature and extent of any redactional additions.1 On the other hand, even the more straightforward outlining of the contents into sections for 'convenience' of commentary commands little more consensus regarding the 1. Thus, e.g., T. H. Robinson ('The Structure of Jeremiah 50, 51', JTS 19 [1918] 251-265) isolates some fifty or so separate oracles or fragments; P. Volz (Der Prophet Jeremia [KAT] [Leipzig: 19282] 422-441) finds a basic stock of five poems with numerous additions, including the sayings relating to Israel in 50:4-7, 17-20, 28, 33-34; 51:5a, 10, 11b, 24; G. Fohrer ('Vollmacht über Völker and Königreiche (Jer 46-51P, BZAW 155 [Berlin: 1981] 50-52) separates out twenty speeches along with several more or less extensive redactional strata, to one of which he assigns, like Volz, the sayings relating to Israel in 51:5, 10, 11b, 24, adding 51:34-39, 49-50, 51, whilst those in 50:4-7, 17-20, 33-34 he assigns to the stock of separate speeches. Fohrer considers motivation for the fall of Babylon throughout the chapters to be redactional; W. Rudolph (Jeremia [HAT] [Tübingen: 19683] 297-316) isolates fifteen independent poems or pieces with only a very few additions (notably, 50:17b-18, 38b; 51:10, 11b, 28, 46, 57); A. Condamin (Le Livre de Jérémie [EB] [Paris: 19363] 350-352) takes the chapters to be comprised of four separate compositions. 26 TYNDALE BULLETIN 35 (1984) natural divisions within the material as it stands.2 Indeed, the composition is commonly viewed as a loose and amorphous conglomerate in which the same stock themes recur time and time again without rhyme or reason, order or progression, and without, for the most part, indication of boundaries and interconnections between separate units - and hence viewed as lacking semblance of structure giving shape and coherence to its parts and to the whole, such coherence as it has being one simply of general theme.3 But is such a view - often expressed with pejorative implication - a fair assessment of the literary character of the composition?4 It is our impression that its shapelessness and structural incoherence is most often simply taken for granted and made a presupposition for the study of the text without it this question being asked. One suspects that this is as much because of lack of concern with the final form of the text as a meaningful context for its interpretation5 as lack of any obvious patterning within it. Be that as it may, the question should be asked, and it is to this question that our paper is addressed. To anticipate, we hope we demonstrate that the composition is not a disordered and chaotic conglomerate of at best thematically related elements but rather a well-ordered complex of structurally related elements. Specifically, it will be submitted that the composition is comprised of six movements - as we shall call them - set within a common framework, each one of which forms a unified and relatively independent structural pattern; further, that 2. Cf. J. Bright, Jeremiah (AB) (New York: 1965) 359; E. W. Nicholson, The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah: Chapters 26-52 (CNEB) (Cambridge: 1975) 201; J. A. Thompson, The Book of Jeremiah (NICOT) (Grand Rapids: 1980) :731. 3. C. Budde, 'Ueber die Capitel 50 and 51 des Buches Jeremia', JDTh 23 (1878) 456-459; B. Duhm, Das Buch Jeremia (KHC) (Tübingen: 1901) 360; J. P. Hyatt, Jeremiah (IB) (New York: 1956) 1124; A. Weiser, Das Buch des Propheten Jeremia (ATD) (Göttingen: 19604) 427; Bright, Jeremiah 359; Rudolph, Jeremia 297; Thompson, Jeremiah 731. 4. Cf. already M. Kessler, 'Rhetoric in Jeremiah 50 and 51', Semitics 3 (1973) 18-35. 5. The need to reckon seriously with the final form of Old Testament prophetic texts and not just theme primary literary units into which they may be decon- structed has been increasingly recognized in recent years: see, conveniently, J. F. A. Sawyer, 'A Change AITKEN: Oracles against Babylon 27 through its structure each movement articulates its own particular and, in essential respects, its own distinctive perspective on the general topic of the composition, and, finally, that the six movements themselves are structured together in such a way as to articulate a perspective now informing the composition as a whole. Before we proceed, something should be said by way of explanation of the kind of structures and perspectives that will form the object of our analysis. This we may do by describing briefly the concerns of the several steps in the analysis. The first step is to divide the composition into its major blocks of material, that is, to delimit the several movements. For ease of presentation this division will be assumed; and in any case it stands or falls with the following steps. The next step is to divide the movement into its major thematic or topical sections and to determine how these are structured together rhetorically. Here thematic balances, verbal repetitions and echoes will be found to play the key role in binding the sections together into a rhetorical unity. On this basis the structure of the movement will be delineated as a pattern of themes at the surface level of the text. The third step is to restate this pattern at a deeper level, that is, to express the surface structure in terms of an underlying deep structure of which it may be regarded as an actualization.6 Here it is essential ____________________________ of Emphasis in the Study of the Prophets', in Israel's Prophetic Tradition: Essays in Honour of Peter. R. Ackroyd, ed. R. Coggins et al. (Cambridge: 1982) 233-249; further, K. Koch et al., Amos untersucht mit den Methoden einer strukturalen Formgeschichte (AOAT 30) (Neukirchen-Vluyn: 1976). 6. Here we make use of a distinction between surface and deep structures such as is found in structural analysis (cf., in general, D. Patte, What is Structural Exegesis? [Philadelphia: 1976]) without, however, conscious presupposition concerning the nature of deep structure or model for its analysis. As B. Nathhorst states: 'Every researcher must him- self set up the goals for his analysis and choose the analysis, the "recurrent units", the "relational 28 TYNDALE BULLETIN 35 (1984) to define clearly the structural level at which this part of the analysis operates.7 A cursory reading of the text suggests that its statements can be classified into three categories. First, there are statements concerning the situation. These centre on Babylon's past actions against Israel, Yahweh or the nations/the whole earth, and the present conditions resulting therefrom, or, less frequently, on Israel's past actions against Yahweh. Secondly, there are statements concerning the intervention. These centre around Yahweh's judgement of and the fall of Babylon. Thirdly, there are statements concerning the outcome. These focus on the consequence of Babylon's fall as it concerns either Israel or the nations/the whole earth. It may be reasonably assumed that perspectives within the composition can be defined within the terms of these three categories. We may therefore postulate a deep structure consisting in the matrix ‘situation - intervention – outcome’.8 The individual units within the matrix can, for convenience, be termed ground-elements. ____________________________ qualities" and the "limits" which he conceives will best serve these goals' (Formal or Structural Studies of Traditional Tales [Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion, No. 9] [Stockholm: 1969] 31). 7. 'It is important to distinguish among various levels of structural analysis and to be explicit about the level on which the analysis is being performed' (D. Patte, 'An Analysis of Narrative Structure and the Good Samaritan', Semeia 2 [1974] 2). 8. B. Wiklander ('The Context and Meaning of NHR 'L in Jer. 51:44', SEA 43 [1978] 46-50) identifies a rather similar pattern (namely, 'before - Yahweh's future intervention - after') to which he considers most of the semantic features within the text can be related. Wiklander, however, examines the pattern in relation to each of the 'dramatis personae' (Yahweh, Babylon, Yahweh's people, the nations) and does not consider how this pattern may be actualized, in full or in part, in different sections of the composition. AITKEN: Oracles against Babylon 29 We can now express the purpose of this third step as being to restate the surface structure in terms of the ground-elements specified by its parts. Thereby the structure of the movement will now appear as a pattern of ground-elements. As will emerge, the pattern establishes pairings of ground-elements in which any two may stand together in close structural relation. Throughout the composition, therefore, there are three basic kinds of pairings, namely, 'Situation - Intervention', 'Situation - Outcome', and 'Intervention - Outcome'. Each movement will be found to be made up of at least one such basic pairing, more usually of two or all three. We shall describe these pairings as the structural components of the movements. From the patterning of ground-elements within the movement, then, two things can be read off which together may be taken as definitive of the movement's perspective. The first is the structural components which make up the pattern, and the second is the order of precedence which the pattern accords to its structural components.
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